Comments: WinVICE has a nice windows interface (pull down menus) and a full screen option (ALT+D), but you might just want to resize the program window (which is possible since version 2.2, at last!) without losing image quality. You can make snapshots from your game (savegames) which are about 80K, which is a lot less than the snapshots of CCS64 (1MB).

Known problems: WinVICE 3.0 does not seem to load .t64 images. It says "PRESS PLAY ON TAPE", but you can't start the tape with File - Datasette control - Start. Solution for now: use WinVICE 2.4.

Playing games with multiple files

Some C64 games came on more than one floppy disk, like The Last Ninja or California Games. When you download these games, they'll consist of several files (1 file for each disk). So what to do with those?

Start the game by loading disk file 1 or the disk file that is called "bootdisk" or similar, with File - Autostart disk/tape image. Virtual Drive 8 will be used.

When the game asks for disk 2 (or 3, or 4, or whatever), attach the disk file to the emulator with File - Attach disk image - Drive 8. Press space, or the key that is configured as the joystick fire button to continue.

Keyboard mapping

If you want to get serious with your virtual Commodore 64, you have to know about the keyboard mapping. Default mapping mode is positional. That means that when you press a key on your keyboard, a character shows up that should be there if it were a C64 keyboard. For example, when you press shift and 2, a double quote will show. If you press the minus key a plus sign will show. We don't think that's workable.

Hence we'll use the symbolic mapping mode. All characters on your keyboard represent the corresponding keys on a C64 keyboard, if available. You change the settings as follows:

Your keyboard will work as expected now, provided you have a keyboard with a US layout. However, there are certain keys on a C64 keyboard that are not on yours. Those keys have been mapped as follows:

Left CTRL is the Commodore key

ESC and Caps lock keys are the Run/stop key

Tab key is the CTRL key

` (single quote) key is the Left arrow key

\ (backslash) key is the Pound sign key

Home key is the CLR HOME key

Page up key is the RESTORE key

Arrow keys represent the CRSR keys

Keep this in mind when you're choosing the keys which represent your virtual joystick. Some menus require the CRSR keys to scroll through them. By default, the arrow keys represent the CRSR keys. If you've assigned the arrow keys to joystick, you won't be able to navigate through the menu.

The screen looks blurry!

As of version 2.4, CRT emulation is on by default. That means that when you start WinVICE, the screen looks like a CRT television: kind of blurry and full of horizontal lines. Just like in the old days! CRT emulation was available in version 2.3, but it looks much better in 2.4. However, "much better" could be interpreted as "way worse" when you like clear graphics. In that case, turn off CRT emulation:

Click on Settings - Video Settings

Click on the VICII Render Filter tab

Choose none at Render filter and click Ok

If you'd like WinVICE to remember this, click on Settings - Save current settings.